All right, this post may cause me a little bit of trouble, but please take what I say with a grain of salt. Obviously I am not an expert on anything, and much of what I say is based on opinions.

Let's talk about webcomics that use a manga or anime style (for the rest of the post I will just say "anime" and use it to encompass both styles). I promise I won't make the sweeping generalization of "all anime style webcomics are crap" that gets tossed around lightly on the web. But there's no doubt that there is a saturation of these kinds of webcomics. Why?

Well, the obvious answer is that anime has a huge and loyal fanbase. Fans, especially artistic ones, want to emulate it because it reinforces their passion for it. Another answer is because it's easy. Both of these reasons are poor reasons to use it as a style, even if they are well-intended.

Emulation is a poor artistic choice. Just because you love Dragonball Z it doesn't mean you should create a comic using that exact style. Take inspiration from it. If you like the way the eyes are drawn, try that, but use your own style. You don't have a style? Then keep drawing; you'll eventually develop your style. And style is like a fingerprint - no two styles are exactly the same. Unless, of course, you are conciously emulating one. Turn off that part of your brain and up the ampage to the creative part.

As for the easy-to-draw aspect, here's something you may not have noticed: Good anime is not easy to draw. Generic, run-of-the-mill, bad anime is easy to draw. Why do you want to have a generic style? Why do you want to be lost in the sea of bad artwork? Make yourself a life raft out of good drawing skills.

And using the anime cliches - the giant sweatdrop, the frustration vein, etc. - is a total cop-out. Don't tell me it's part of the style. If you are 100% Japanese and you know the insides and outs of why they do the things they do with anime, then I'll concede and give you a free pass on the cliches. If you're just an American with an obsession for anime - do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Learn how to make your characters emote. Study facial expressions. Study hand gestures. Study body posture. All of these things add up and will express emotions better than anime cliches ever could.

And for crying out loud, don't do the "action sound effects" thing. You know, writing "falls over" if a character - you guessed it - falls over. Learn to draw action. Learn to draw body movement.

By forcing yourself to steer clear of emulation and creating your own style you will not only have a better product, you will feel better as an artist. Trust me. I tried the anime stuff and when I look back on it, I'm glad I didn't stick with it. I'm more than happy with my current style because it's mine. It can't be lumped into a generic category.

Make your artwork stand out and your comic will stand out.

Writing, whether it be for a story, an essay, or even a webcomic, is not easy. Well, let me rephrase that - good writing is not easy. You could be the warrior of the English language, wielding correct spelling like a sword and proper grammar as your shield, but that doesn't mean you can string words together and make them interesting. Similarly, you could have the hardest working imagination this side of a tripped-out hippy, but it doesn't mean you can structure your words properly.

While I can't add anything to your imagination and I don't want to discuss the technicalities of the English language here, I can and will offer some advice that should make your webcomic writing a tad easier. However, the caveat is two-fold. One, everything I tell you is something that I've tried and has worked for me, but may not work for you (and that's okay, as I'll explain later). Two, this is mostly aimed at long-form webcomics or gag-driven comics that run short storylines.

The Pondering Phase: One of my favorite writers, Terry Brooks, offered up a suggestion in regards to writing, and I've found that it works well. Take some time ruminate about a storyline. Not just think, but ponder, daydream, analyze, etc. Go over it in your head again and again and again, but don't write anything down yet. This is sort of like a filtering process - the good ideas will get caught in your brain and the rest will wash away down the drain. When you've had some time to let the things come to a boil in your head - for me it's usually when the excitement builds to a point where I can't contain it anymore - write it all down, but don't structure it just yet. That's the next part.

The Outlining Phase: This is where you'll give a bit of structure to your story, but still keep it loose. Outline the story as if it's a script, with back-and-forth between characters and action parentheticals. Don't worry about panel or page restrictions, just write. Get it all down on paper (or on the word processing program of your choice, but I prefer to do this stuff on paper; it's more organic that way). Now you have your storyline in a readable and, most importantly, reviewable format. Go over it a couple of times and make edits - trim the dialogue, switch words around, add some lines, whatever you need to do. Just don't become married to it yet. Once you've got that done, we move onto the harder part.

The Portioning Phase: Now you have to take what you've written, break it up, and fit it into whatever format your webcomic is - three panel, four panel, six panel, full pages, etc. The tricky part is not to compromise what you've written in your outline for the sake of fitting things into your format. Once you've tried this process a few times, though, you'll find that as you're writing the outline, you subconciously create the dialogue to eventually fit into the format you use. Remember what I said about keeping things loose? This was for a good reason. You won't always be able to transplant things directly from your outline into the format. Sometimes you'll have to add a punchline that you didn't think of earlier, or sacrifice a line of dialogue for pacing's sake. In the end, if you play your cards right, you'll end up with well-written scripts for an entire batch of strips/pages. But we're not done yet.

The Roughing Phase: Sketch out your strips/pages on scrap paper or in a sketch pad. Don't worry about perfection, this is just preliminary. Sometimes when you can see visuals accompanying what you wrote, it can prompt new ideas for dialogue or move the direction of the story somewhere better. Plus it's just a good idea to think things out before you finalize anything. Speaking of which...

The Finalizing Phase: This is where you take pencils and pens to paper (or stylus to tablet). By this point, because of the steps you've taken, you should be confident that what you've written is solid. There should be no doubts in your mind. But if there is, fix it before you realize you have to scrap the whole thing and start over.

And there you have it! This is a process that I've developed and it works for me. Try it. It may work for you, or it may not. Maybe you'll take some of what I said but do your own thing. This is totally understandable. No two people have the same processes for writing because we all operate differently. Find what works for you and stick with it. At the end of the day we're all heading towards the same goal even if we're wearing different running shoes.

My first suggestion for a topic was advertising. Advertising is one of the most important things you can do for your webcomic. Without it, how will people know about it? They won't, that's the bottom line. Getting your webcomic's name out there is a lot of work, and it can cost money, but if you're smart about it you'll do well.

Before you even begin to advertise, though, ask yourself - Do I have enough interesting content to advertise? If you only have one, two, or three strips up, or if your story hasn't quite picked up it's pace yet, or if you just have the site up with nothing on it, the answer to this is no. If you direct people to your webcomic and it has nothing interesting on it, or not enough to hold a reader's interest, they will leave and not bother coming back. So make sure before you really start advertising that you have enough to hook a potential reader.

The first thing to remember is to take baby steps. Worry about the big ad campaigns later on down the road. Right now you're just rolling the snowball down the hill. Once you get that started, it'll grow and pick up speed.

What do I mean by that? Well, the easiest and cheapest way of advertising is word-of-mouth. Tell your friends and family to spread the word. Place a link in your signature on forums (but remember your manners and don't annoy people about visiting your site). The intended purpose of this is that the people you reach will see your webcomic, like it, and spread the word to other people. Those other people will do the same, and so on and so on.

When you've exhausted that avenue, move on to the free webcomic resource sites. This includes listing sites like Onlinecomics.net, The Webcomic List, and Webcomicz, and top lists like buzzComix and TopWebcomics. These will put you in touch with a large number of webcomic readers. You can even branch out to non-webcomic-related networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and even LiveJournal. As of right now I only know of one webcomic-related networking site, ComicSpace, but there may be more I'm unaware of.

Once you've done all that, and once you feel confident that you have a webcomic worth investing money in, it's time to move onto paid advertisements. Many webcomic sites will offer spots on their page in the form of buttons or banners. Usually you need to contact the creator to get a price and sometimes to get on a waiting list. Check some of your favorite webcomics for advertising opportunities.

Another increasingly popular option is Project Wonderful. Project Wonderful is a bit complicated to sort out at first if you aren't familiar with bid-based advertising, but once you get it figured out it's a very useful tool. You basically set up an account with money in it, and you bid on ad space. It's a pay-per-day model, so you can find advertising as cheap as a few cents a day (although you may not get a lot of visits from these ads). PW offers all sorts of options and tools for you to make the best decisions on places to advertise.

You do need to be smart about your advertising, though. Keep in mind the demographics of the sites you look at - are the people visiting that site likely to enjoy your comic? When I look for sites to advertise on I usually look for webcomics that are fantasy-related or that have a feel that my comic shares. However, if you have the money are willing to try gambling on a long shot, you may just capture some people on a non-related site. I know the webcomics I read range from one end of the spectrum to the other, and there are many others like me out there. But for the most part you want to try for the demographic that is the safest bet for you and your webcomic.

And while advertising is important, let me stress again that what you are advertising needs to be the best that you can provide. If you don't have a good webcomic, all your advertising will be worth naught.

I was originally going to start doing "how to" articles in a chronological fashion - from the start of a webcomic to the maintaining of it. But I realized that there's no way I can do that, because I'll inevitably skip something. There's so much ground to cover and if I get mired in the details, we'll never move forward.

So from this point on I'm taking questions from you, the reader. If you want to know how to do something, please feel free to ask. I will give the best answer I can give you.

Otherwise, I will be posting articles as they come to me. They will generally be lumped into the following categories:

Webcomics 101: The beginning steps of creating a webcomic.
Webcomics 201: More in-depth articles on a particular step (i.e. drawing, writing, web design, etc.)
Webcomics Analysis: A break-down of the dos and don'ts of webcomics, usually citing examples.
Webcomics News: If something major goes down that I feel will benefit from a discussion, I'll post it.

More categories will be added as I go along, and I will go back and tag the older articles with these categories.

Before I start this entry, I need to make a point. When I single out a webcomic or even several webcomics, it's not because I hate them. On the contrary, these are comics that I read on a regular basis. I think it's my enjoyment of them that leads to the picking apart of them because I want them to be as good as they can be. I just felt that I needed to get that out there.

I mentioned in a previous entry the difficulty of writing a webcomic that mixes humor and drama. Usually if an inexperienced or poor writer tries it, it ends up being an oil and water mixture. You have both floating around, but they never come together and form a cohesive structure. But it can be done. Just look at movies like The Royal Tennenbaums. You have a drama-drenched story involving bitterness, hatred, redemption, and love, but you laugh your way through it. It works. But it's a fine line to walk.

So what brought this up today? I submit to you exhibit A: Questionable Content from Monday, March 10th. We've had the build up to Faye and Dora's confrontation, and this strip was part of the pay-off. I was feeling good panels one through four, but that last panel... *sigh* This is a case of oil and water. The drama is moving smoothly, we're getting into the moment, but Jeph, god love him, sneaks his trademark last panel jokiness into the mix. Unfortunately, because of the dramatic build-up, the comedy just doesn't work, and it ruins the dramatic moment.

Far be it from me to tell another webcomic creator what to do, but here's my opinion of how it should have worked. The dramatic dialogue should have continued all the way into the last panel, but Penny eating popcorn - which was funny - should remain there. That's non-intrusive comedy on the dramatic moment. We get our dramatic moment, and then we glance over at Penny calmly watching and eating popcorn and we get a chuckle. It works because it's subtle, something that I think a lot of comedy writing folks tend to forget. You don't always have to be so in-your-face with the comedy; what that does is prove that you're underestimating the intelligence of your audience.

There's no set formula to making drama and humor mix together, and that's what makes it so hard. Drama has rules and comedy has rules, but those rules are exclusive to each other and they never get together for a long-term relationship. But if you play your cards right, sometimes they can get together and go bowling and everyone has a good time. I think the real trick to it is to ask yourself if the mixture works. If not, how can you fix it? Can you fix it? If not, then go one route or the other, but not both, or you'll end up doing a split and ripping your pants.

It's been noted in quite a few place, most notably in the popular Webcomics Weekly podcast, that long form comics have less of a chance at succeeding financially using the current business models of daily comics. The main reason is the slow pacing of a story-driven weekly (or even tri-weekly) strip as opposed to the read-and-be-on-your-way pace of a gag-driven daily strip.

I think I've found an obstacle that could be avoided in order to up your chances at succeeding with a long form comic. The problem lies in the attempt at mixing humor/gags into a plot-driven story. It's something that isn't easy to do - keep your story moving while bringing in the laughs.

First of all, lets establish that moving a story along is difficult enough when you're only publishing three strips/pages a week. I know this from experience. It's even more difficult when it's a weekly gig; you need to make sure your story is solid enough that people will keep coming back (take a look at Earthsong; Lady Yates recently dropped down to one update a week, but I can guarantee her readers will keep coming back because of her strong storytelling skills, not to mention artistic ability).

Now let's add humor into the mix. The trick is to only add what you need. It's tough, because, let's face it, you've got a thousand jokes and lots of witty dialogue you want to share with people. But the reality is if you start dropping that stuff, the story takes forever to move forward.

Case in point - College Roomies From Hell!!! This is a comic that I've gone back and forth on (for reasons outside of this subject), but today I came to the realization that the comic suffers from a slow pace because Maritza drops too much humor into the strip. Sure, the dialogue can be funny, sometimes witty, always absurd, but a lot of the time it's forced into the strip, pushing the story to the side. Update days will go by and nothing will happen, except characters talking. Now, if the comic didn't rely so heavily on plot and subplots, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. But Maritza chose to give the comic some meat, in the form of relationships, good vs. evil themes, and all sorts of other dramatic elements. Also, if the comic updated daily, or even five times a week, she could get away with the way she currently does CRFH!!!, although I still wouldn't recommend it. There has to be some compensation to allow for pacing.

Now let's look at a comic that succeeds in this realm - Girl Genius. The Foglios only update three times a week, but they manage to keep the story moving and make us laugh at the same time. They've succeeded in finding a formula of humor and story that works to keep the pacing of the comic marching forward without too many sluggish moments. They keep the plot and action in mind, even when the characters are conversing with each other. Very little of the dialogue is ever dedicated to "fluff talk".

In summary, your best chances at gaining and securing a readership and potentially making money off of said readership when you're doing a non-daily, story-driven comic lie within making sure your pacing is spot-on. If things move too slowly because you're inserting too much fluff into the story, people will lose interest or won't be interested in the first place. Remember two things, and I constantly push for both of these: 1.) Less is more, and 2.) KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!

You can’t build a house without a foundation. Well, you can, but eventually it’s going fall over or sink into the ground. The same goes for webcomics – you need to be building your webcomic on a solid foundation. What do I mean by this? You need to go into this knowing how you want to do it.

Do you want to do gag-a-day strips or a serial story? Do you want to be a single panel comic, a traditional newspaper strip, or a graphic novel page comic? Color or black and white? Original recipe or extra tasty crispy?

Okay, okay, let’s slow down a bit. I’m guessing that if you’ve decided to do a webcomic, you probably at least have an inkling of what you want to do. Now it’s a matter of what you’re capable of doing. So how do you figure that out? Do some practice runs. Can you write thirty four-panel strips, each with a punch line? Can you create thirty one-panel gag comics? Can you keep continuity going – and interesting – for thirty pages? Thirty isn’t an official benchmark or anything, but it’s a good test of your abilities.

If punch lines aren’t your bag, you might want to stick with telling a story. If you can’t keep a story going, you’ll probably want to stick with gag-a-day comics. If you can do both, try shaking both into the mix. There’s no set formula here; it all boils down to what you’re comfortable with.

There are also some technical issues to consider that will affect you in the long run. First is being able to put together a strip or page in a timely manner. I understand that there are a good number of successful comics that update on a sporadic and even unpredictable basis, but my personal conviction is that you should have a set schedule. Even if it’s only one page a month, you should be able to guarantee your readers something. However, if you say you’re going to do three days a week, make sure that the format you choose can be done three days a week. Can you come up with three punch lines per week on time? Can you color your full-page layouts and stick to your schedule? This is where doing practice runs comes in handy again. Set yourself a test schedule and act is if you’re officially updating a webcomic. If you can’t do it, you can at least find out where the problem is and fix it before you go live.

Another technical issue to think about is putting your strips into a print collection someday. Yes, you’re a long way off, but it’s happening more and more so you may as well prepare ahead of time. Some readers like to have a hard copy of the comic on their bookshelves, and you may even be able to make some decent cash off of the venture. However, if you have an unwieldy or unconventional strip format, a print collection may be difficult or even impossible to put together. So try to keep your format simple and, above all, consistent.

Make sure that the format you choose will be good for you and for your readers. One of the easiest ways to lose your readership is frequent hiatuses and missed updates. You want to keep your readers happy. But on the same token, you don’t want to make yourself go insane trying to keep up with a schedule that doesn’t work with the format you chose.

You didn’t think this much preparation went into a webcomic, did you? And we haven’t even gotten to the hard stuff yet!

This journal has been sitting idle for too long. I've been using the time to decide what I wanted to do with it, and I've decided that I am going to start posting articles on how to do a webcomic. These articles will appear in some form or another elsewhere eventually (more on that as it develops), but I will be using this journal as a testing grounds for the articles themselves. So below you can read the first of (hopefully) many more to come.

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You’ve got a great idea for a story that’s just bursting to get out of you. The problem is that you’re not very good at writing prose. You like to draw, though, and you’ve got a scanner.

Welcome to the start of your webcomic.

My name is Pete Tarkulich, and not only am I the creator of the webcomic Bardsworth (www.bardsworth.com), but I’ve been a rabid webcomic reader since about 2002. And while I don’t view myself as part of the “webcomic community”, I do pay close attention to what goes on within it. These credits may not make me a webcomics expert, but I’m confident that I know enough to guide you through the answer to the question “How do I make a webcomic?”

So why do people choose to do webcomics over print comics? Well, there are a lot of advantages to doing a webcomic. The simplest answer is that anyone can do it. You can. Your sister can. Your grandmother can. Your dog may have a bit of trouble, but I’m sure if he really wanted to he could. In the most bare-bones setting you can do a webcomic with a sketch pad, a pencil, a scanner, and a bit of internet know-how. I wouldn’t suggest it, but you can.

Another answer is that it’s a cheap way to be published and distributed. You draw your comic and put it up on the web, and boom, you’re published. The internet stretches over the entire planet and is accessible by anyone with a computer and a connection. Your distribution is built in.

Yet another answer is the general nature of the internet. You can get immediate feedback on your work, you can chat with your readers, and you collaborate and converse with other creators. Not to mention that with the internet you have the advantage of things you can’t do in print, like animation or interactive functions.

There are probably a handful of other reasons to do webcomic, but to me these are the most important.

However, just because you can do a webcomic, does that mean you should? Can you keep up with an update schedule? Do you have the time and the money to market yourself and draw in readers? Do you have the skills necessary to produce not only good artwork but a good story as well? If you’re unsure about your abilities in regards to any of these questions, you may want to reconsider your decision to do a webcomic. However, if you have a confident answer to each of these questions, then hop aboard.

Many people jump into the webcomic world unprepared. I’m hoping that this column will help prepare you and guide you along. I don’t claim to have all the answers, and you might even find that doing things differently works better, but I’m pretty sure I can steer you in the right direction.

You might want to bring a compass just in case, though.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Of course, there are probably only three people reading this blog anyway, but none-the-less my apology goes out to those three people.

I'm still catching up with my webcomic reading after my vacation, so I don't have a whole lot to say. But here are a few tidbits. On with the show!

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Cutest. Strip. Ever. Seriously, even if you don't know anything about the character or the story going on in Wapsi Square, you can't deny the cuteness of that last panel. Just try.

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On the heels of "Cutest Strip Ever", we have "Best Obscure Joke Ever" over at Nothing Nice To Say. I feel special because while I don't get a lot of references in NNTS, I got this one straight off the bat. Go me!

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I was checking links to comics that I haven't checked up on in a while (hey, I read a lot of them), and it looks like Spell Check has started over from scratch. It didn't get too far into the story before the restart, so you aren't missing too much if you're just reading it now, but if you don't check out the site you are missing too much. Abe has one of the most interactive and interesting webcomic page setups I've seen and I applaud him for it. Most webcomic creators, myself included, don't utilize the web for it's interactiveness as much as we could, so it's great to see a fresh approach. Oh, and his art style rocks, too.

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Welcome to Webcomic Talk, my journal of thoughts on webcomics and the webcomics world. I wanted to start with a little who I am, what this is, and what to expect sort of thing.

My name is Peter Tarkulich and I am the creator of the webcomic Bardsworth. Since before doing Bardsworth and up to now I've been an avid - even rabid - reader of webcomics. My reading list is huge and I'm constantly adding new comics to the list. Because of this, oftentimes I'll want to say something regarding the comic. Here is my outlet.

Let me state right off the bat that this is not a webcomics review blog. I don't intend on posting multiple paragraph reviews of comics. If I discover a comic I like, I'll mention it here, but I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not you like it. What I intend to do is to use this journal for thoughts that strike as I read a comic. Did the creator do something really great? Did the creator do something wrong? These are things that I'll go into.

Here's my disclaimer section. Everything stated in this LiveJournal is my opinion (except where otherwise noted as fact or someone else's opinion). As such, I will not tolerate someone telling me that I'm wrong. I encourage discussion, and if you have arguments that you think might make me see your side, that's great, but don't disallow me my opinion. I will also not tolerate webcomic or webcomic creator bashing. Constructive criticism is one thing, but personal attacks are another. I understand that since this is an open forum these things may not be avoidable, and I refuse to lock this journal as a friends-only place, so I will deal with these issues should they arise.

Now, since the things that I post may be criticism and are in the public view, I want to remind anyone with a webcomic who may be the subject of said criticism that your comic is also in the public view and therefore subject to criticism. Do not take anything I say as an attack on you, the creator. I will do my best to point out any failings I see and offer advice, but whether or not you take this to heart is your decision.

On a technical note, if I reference a particular strip, I will post a date next to it if there is no specific link other than the main page URL to link to. This is so that once that strip is pushed into the archive, you can look it up by date if I don't manage to come back and edit the link to direct you to the archive. Did that make sense?

I think that about covers everything. Again, welcome and I hope you join along in the discussions.